Dreams, Memories and Reality

I have a question about dreams, memories, and how the human mind stores this information.
I have read that memories are stored as images.
If you imagine or daydream an image in your mind..how does your brain know the difference between fantasy and reality?
Are dreams really the mind filtering out daily garbage?
What about dreams of people or places you have never seen?
Is reality the only "real" thing..or are our dreams an alternate?

How beautiful it would be to see man wrestle with his illusions and vanquish them.
- Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian writer awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988 (1911-2006)

What a spectacle! There's nothing that some people like better than to watch someone destroy themselves. But is that what Mahfouz intended?

Indeed, is it even possible to wrestle with our own illusions without destroying ourselves?

Illusions are all we have to work with when we perceive the world. We believe what we see, hear, taste, touch and smell is the real thing. But it's never the same as someone else who experiences the exact same thing.

www.scribd.com...




Mod Edit: Big Quote – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 3-7-2008 by Crakeur]

How the brain turns reality into dreams.
www.msnbc.msn.com...


Dream Interpretation, and information
www.paralumun.com...

Originally posted by RubyGloom

How beautiful it would be to see man wrestle with his illusions and vanquish them.
- Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian writer awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988 (1911-2006)

What a spectacle! There's nothing that some people like better than to watch someone destroy themselves. But is that what Mahfouz intended?

how do you reach that conclusion from those words?he's saying "get real" isn't he?

The conclusion was not mine, but that of the author of the article.
Follow the link.
I simply found the article beautiful, and intriguing, and thought inspiring.

sorry,i read the op and didn't follow the link

"Most of us convince ourselves that our waking experiences are the real ones, but that is what we have been taught since early childhood. ("It's only a dream. It's not real."

you're right imo,beautiful

The biggest question is..are our dreams another reality that we create..an alternate??
How much of our reality is created by us..and how much by the influenced realities of other people, or an external force?
Perhaps our "reality" is really a dreamtime...
en.wikipedia.org...